PUBG announces competitive 2019 season

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds will inaugurate a Global Championship in 2019, with teams from across the world competing to claim the title of best professional PUBG squad in the world.

PUBG was at the forefront of putting the battle royale genre on the video game industry map, and now PUBG Corp. is looking to help propel battle royale esports into the future with the announcement of its first season of professional competition. Nine pro regions will be competing against each other and among themselves in order to secure a spot in the season-ending Global Championship, which will feature a $2 million prize purse.

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The PUBG Global Championship will begin in January 2019 with the first of three phases that will be at the center of the competition. Each pro region will begin and end its league competitions in the same timeframe of the others. After the completion of each phase, each of the regions' top teams will battle it out in various global events that will be hosted by select third-party organizers. A Global Championship All-Star match will take place in August between Phases 2 and 3 at the midpoint of the season.

A universal rule set that consists of 16 teams of four playing in first-person perspective on the maps of Mirarmar and Erangel will be in effect for all competitions during the first season of play.

The end of Phase 3 of the Global Championship will then see the top teams of each region for the entire season gather together at the Global Championship finals in November.

Six of the nine regions will operate under a pro league format, while the remaining three will function under a pro circuit format where a series of tournaments will be the main form of competition.